CU archive documenting the history of home economics is available online

By Susan Lang

Cornell is putting more than 1,500 volumes -- more than 600,000 pages -- in an online archive documenting the history of home economics, thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The archive, available since early this summer, provides free access to hundreds of books and journals published between 1850 and 1950, many of which are drying and crumbling at an alarming rate.

The archive is provided through Cornell's Albert R. Mann Library at http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/.

The titles in the Home Economics Archive: Research Tradition and History (HEARTH) were identified by more than 60 U.S. scholars. The materials focus on applied arts and designs; food and nutrition; home economics; housing, furnishings and equipment; hygiene; retail or consumer studies; clothing and textiles; home management; child care and human development; and institutional management.

Preserving the rich history of home economics is important, says a leading feminist scholar.

"Home economists in early 20th century America had a major role in the Progressive Era, the development of the welfare state, the triumph of modern hygiene and scientific medicine, the application of scientific research in a number of industries, and the popularization of important research on child development, family health and family economics," said Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of human development and of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. "What other group of American women did so much, all over the country, and got so little credit? We must do everything we can to preserve and organize records and materials from this important female ghetto."

The collection, the first of this scale and scope in these subject areas, provides a comprehensive record of home economics, a discipline that played a vital part in the growth and development of public health and nutrition, women's professions and women's roles in their communities. Yet, its history is filled with contradictions, said project director Mary Ochs, head of collection development and preservation at Cornell's Mann Library.

"The field is both feminist and traditional. Home economics is the discipline through which significant numbers of women entered academia and scientific research for the first time," said Ochs. "The material provides unequalled access to the story of women's lives in the last century and a half: how women worked, what they hoped and strove for, and how they saw themselves as members of families and communities. It provides this information for women of many classes and of diverse circumstances -- from middle-class rural and farm women to immigrants in large cities and African-American women whose families were emerging from slavery."

HEARTH was supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal agency that supports 15,000 museums and 122,000 libraries in the United States.